Paper Summary:

This paper explores the economic history of the fur trade in early Canada with particular reference to the Native Canadian peoples of the time. It argues that this fur trade profoundly reshaped the social and economic order of Native Canadian societies to an even greater degree than it shaped the economic relations of European settlement in early Canada. It then shows how the trade defined the social, political and economic order of early Canada in a manner profoundly different from that of the early United States.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
The Fur Trade and Early European-Indian Contacts
The European and Native Canadian Struggle for Control
The Impact of the Fur Trade on Indian-European Attitudes
Points of Contact: The Fur Trade and Inter-Racial Marriage
Later Developments
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"In conclusion, it is clear that the fur trade played an enormous role in the early history of Canada. The economics of this trade not only provided the impetus for more enduring European contacts with Aboriginals, but also gave both sides good reason to maintain friendly relations for the sake of self-interest. It was the cycle of these trading relationships that led to Canadian traders to move further into the heart of the Continent in an effort to bypass their often sophisticated Indian trading partners. While such moves proved to be invariably in vain, they did support European settlement and expansion in comparatively peaceful interactions with the region's aboriginal populations. From this perspective, it may be said with little or no exaggeration that the economics of the fur trade defined the relations between Europeans and Canadian Indians and, in the long term, the fundamental characteristics of Canada today."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Axtell, James. "The White Indians of Colonial America." The William and Mary Quarterly, XXXII (1975), 228-243.
• Careless, J.M.S. "Frontierism, Metropolitanism and Canadian History." The Canadian Historical Review. 35(1954), 1-21.
• Conrad, Margaret, and Finkel, Alvin. History of the Canadian Peoples: Beginnings to 1867. Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2002.
• Innis, Harold. "The Fur Trade." W.T. Easterbrook and M.H. Watkins, eds. Approaches to Canadian Economic History. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, 20-27.
• Jaenen, Cornelius. "Amerindian Views of French Culture in the Seventeenth Century." The Canadian Historical Review. 55.3 (1977), 261-291.

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